Special advanced screenings of footage from The Amazing Spider-Man will be held in select big cities around the globe tomorrow (from writing this), as Sony initiates the second wind of marketing for its 3D rebooting of the iconic arachnid-powered superhero movie series. A full-length trailer for the film is expected to make its way online shortly thereafter, possibly even that same day.

Today (via the official Amazing Spider-Man website) we have a pair of new character profiles and two wallpaper versions of previous-unveiled images featuring a partially-costumed Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) and Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) in high-school mode – along with excerpts from an interview with director Marc Webb, talking about the film’s darker plot elements, humor, and Garfield’s interpretation of the eponymous character.

Seeing how there will be several plot elements shared between The Amazing Spider-Man and director Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man flick, Sony’s promotional campaign angle for the former has been to emphasize (ad nauseum) that this new flick also tells “the untold story” of Peter Parker. Webb emphasized as much in an interview published in this year’s Comic-Con annual magazine, saying that “there’s a new territory, there’s a new villain, it’s a different Peter Parker” in his movie.

For another look at Amazing Spider-Man‘s Peter and Gwen – along with short descriptions and images for both the new screen incarnations of Aunt May (Sally Field) and Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen), along with Peter’s biological parents, Richard (Campbell Scott) and Mary (Embeth Davidtz) – scroll on down through the gallery below:

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In that Comic-Con mag article, Webb also discusses the balancing act of creating a darker and more grounded representation of the Spider-Man universe, while also retaining enough in the way of light-hearted and comedic elements, so that Amazing Spider-Man avoids becoming an ill-fittingly gritty and dour comic book movie:

“There’s this trickster quality we were very keen on exploring, with that humor and that fun and that wisecracking stuff. We wanted to keep that alive, but we wanted it to be realistic. We wanted that humor to come from a real place. My aim was to create a world where you could feel all those emotions. There are certainly darker, more intense feelings in [‘Amazing Spider-Man’]. There is betrayal, there is tragedy, but there’s also humor and romance. So it’s a very complex bouquet of emotions, but what you have to tread on is what feels authentic and what feels real, and you have to earn those different emotions.”

“There are moments of furiousness and gravity, absolutely. But are there moments of humor and levity and whimsy? Absolutely.”

Similarly, Webb also talks briefly about Garfield’s approach to playing the webslinger:

“Andrew was really great. He used this term to describe Peter Parker in Spider-Man and Spider-Man in particular: he’s a trickster. He was like “How would Spider-Man web this guy? He’d give him a wedgy or he’d do some awful graffiti.” There’s a punk rock quality to Peter Parker that’s really irreverent and fun and that’s something that Andrew embodies in a way that we haven’t seen before. Certainly the materials that have come out have a darker sentiment or there’s a darker projection, but we’re very keen on staying loyal to the humor of Spider-Man.”

Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/Spider-Man

Tobey Maguire brought a mix of boyish innocence and aw-shucks charm while portraying Peter in Raimi’s films, but his take was definitely lacking when it came to capturing the character’s “punk rock” quality – like, his tendency to throw verbal zingers at his enemies, while giving them the physical beatdown.

Hence, it’s good to hear that Garfield is striving to better distinguish his take on P. Parker by embracing those qualities. That’s despite how the plethora of Amazing Spider-Man imagery released to date – with Peter looking emotionally-tormented and distraught – might lead fans to believe we’ll be getting a different version of “emo Peter.” In the aftermath of Spider-Man 3, that idea sounds all the worse, right? Moving on…

Between the reworked live-action iteration of Peter Parker and Amazing Spider-Man‘s different thematic narrative, that’s reason enough for fans to not lose hope in this franchise reboot already. Whether the final film result will soar or splatter, of course, is another matter.

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The Amazing Spider-Man swings into 2D, 3D, and IMAX 3D theaters in the U.S. on July 3rd, 2012.